Location of an Intermolecular Crosslink in Bovine Bone Collagen

Abstract

A peptide containing 59 amino acid residues with a stoichiometric amount of dihydroxylysinonorleucine (0.7 mole) and hydroxylysinonorleucine (0.2 mole) was isolated from reduced ³H labelled bovine bone collagen sequentially cleaved with CNBr and trypsin. Further cleavage of the isolated crosslinked peptide with periodate yielded a radioactive peptide of 45 residues and a non-radioactive peptide of 16 residues. From the characteristic amino acid composition of these peptides it was deduced that the peptide was derived from an intermolecularly crosslinked region between lysyl or hydroxylysyl residues in the carboxy-terminal extension of α1-CB6 (17^c residue) and α1-CB5 (87th residue)‡, This finding supports the observation that the α1-CB6 peak was prominent on carboxymethyl cellulose chromatography of the CNBr digest of bone collagen only after limited pepsin digestion, and is consistent with the results obtained from a smaller crosslinked peptide previously isolated from calf bone collagen.